Even with the PCs’ kingdom growing at their heart, the Stolen Lands are far from tame. An incursion by merciless barbarians spills blood on the PCs’ lands and begins a search for a legendary artifact in the depths of the region’s most infamous wilderness. Amid the perpetual shadows and bottomless bogs of the Hooktongue Slough lie long-mired secrets and terrors eager to consume any who intrude upon their fetid realm. Yet what powers that lurk beyond the swamp seek to end the PCs’ reign? And how might a single, bloodthirsty blade mean the difference between their kingdom’s ruin and its survival?

This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path includes:

“Blood for Blood,” a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 10th-level characters,
by Neil Spicer.

Information on the cruel society and blood-curdling superstitions of boggards, Golarion’s sinister frogmen, by Todd Stewart.

Details on some of the most famous hidden treasures and lost relics of the Stolen Lands, by Brian Cortijo.

Ollix and Phargas learn the perils of gambling with a leucrotta in the Pathfinder’s Journal, by Kevin Andrew Murphy.

Five new monsters, by Julian Neale, F. Wesley Schneider, and Neil Spicer.

Pathfinder Adventure Path is Paizo Publishing's monthly 96-page, perfect-bound, full-color softcover book printed on high-quality paper. It contains an in-depth Adventure Path scenario, stats for about a half-dozen new monsters, and several support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes use the Open Game License and work with both the Pathfinder RPG and the standard 3.5 fantasy RPG rules set.

Average product rating:

Fort Drelev

Havent quite finished the Armag encounter at the end of the book as I write this but so far book 4 is LAME. The battle for Fort Drelev which could have been awsome instead relies on this ridiculous points based system (think kingdom building but without the fun) that forces your party to kill enemy soldiers in a small fort (high alert anyone!) And then make friends with NPC's who do NOTHING to actually help or facilitate in ANYWAY (other then points) the taking of the fort, and if this all wasnt bad enough its all done on a "time clock" where you lose points everyday do to low moral amongst the villagers. This whole story basically leads to you storming the fort but without the excitment or immediacy that you want. Takes what should just be an amazing fight and military action on the part of your PC's and kingdom and drags it out into several sessions to stretch a very weak book 4. I recommend DM's just run a "homebrew" version and keep the Armag storyline.

Great stand alone for 9th level characters...

This adventure was tragically under CRed. Even adding additional monsters to random encounters didn't make it much more challenging. The three times my group had a real challenge were once when I rolled a 100 on the random encounter in the Slough (and a 4 for the quantity), once when the group was so overconfident with their abilities they stormed the keep (I had incorporated a mercenary NPC archer to discourage such brazen actions. Without doing this I am sure that the mage-less group could have easily strong-armed the entire keep.) and finally when the barbarian tribes were united under Armag and marched on the PCs kingdom. I don't like to encourage the 'kick in the door' tactic for every encounter. It's fun to really mop up some baddies sometimes, but 2 or 3 levels of it just gets boring.

Overall I highly recommend this adventure as a stand alone for 9th level characters OR enhancing some of the encounters as part of the Kingmaker AP. Although thematically this adventure was SUPERB and worthy of 5 stars, it just needed a bit of work to make it truly fun for the group. The amount of work needed to make this adventure cohesive, plot advancing, and challenging (not to mention the useless sword) knocks the book down a couple notches.

Just can't give it that 4th star

The Good: -Barbarian villain seems pretty tough.
-Good storyline, overall one of the better stories.
-Rewards for the PCs are really strong, this is important.

The Bad: -1st of 2 main villains is going to go down like a chump.
-Suffers for wanting mass combat but not having rules for it yet.

The Ugly: -OK we see gay characters but big surprise they are pretty lesbians with fan service art, bad form.
-The big bad's sword is effectively a cursed reward.
-The mid level boss is the chump little brother of book 5's boss.
-Its a little too apparent that these adventures were developed by seperate people who were only very basically collaborating. Paizo has gotten better at this but Neil is an excellent author this was not his best IMHO

Overall: The rewards are great, the villain would be better if not sandwiched between an awesome villain (book 3) and a better version of the mid level villain (book 5.) Can't give a 4th star for it...